Computer-implemented method and system for managing attributes of intellectual property documents, optionally including organization thereof

ABSTRACT

A computer-enabled system, method, and medium is provided to support, e.g., analyzing intellectual property documents by assigning attributes to the documents. The present invention is suitable for use by intellectual property professionals and is flexible to support development and use of customized attribute types and attributes. Optionally, a group of intellectual property documents can be divided into projects, which can be ingested including assigning attributes. Optionally, the attributes can be used to filter information included in e.g., searches, and/or reports.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No.10/692,793, filed Oct. 27, 2003, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S.application Ser. No. 10/229,273 filed Aug. 28, 2002, which claimspriority from U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/315,021, filedAug. 28, 2001, all of which are expressly incorporated herein byreference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention is directed to computer-related and/or assistedsystems, methods and computer readable mediums for organizingintellectual property documents. More specifically, it relates tosystems and methods for assigning attributes to intellectual propertydocuments, managing the attributes, and filtering the intellectualproperty documents based on the attributes.

2. Description of the Related Art

Many corporations are focusing on their intellectual property assets asbeing quite valuable. Hence these companies strive to develop largeintellectual property portfolios, and indeed spend time and money onthese assets. There is a concomitant pressure to leverage and/or bettermanage these portfolios of intellectual property assets. As a result, agreat deal of emphasis has been placed on better ways to analyze thevalue of a portfolio, better processes for managing the portfolio andbetter strategies for creating opportunities to extract value from theportfolio.

While these management techniques have resulted in more efficient use ofattorney resources, and more targeted intellectual property filings andfunding, relatively little has been done to take advantage of currentcomputational technologies, the integration of data resources (largelythrough the Internet), and better knowledge-based software systems tohandle aspects of intellectual property. As a result, no process orproduct exists for handling the full range of intellectual propertyfunctions in an automated manner.

Accordingly, there exists a need in the market for a comprehensivesystem that incorporates tools that will give the intellectual propertyprofessional the ability to work in all aspects of their practice areausing automated, analysis tools to prepare them in their practice.

Moreover, many corporations have a wide range of intellectual propertyassets, but no technique to make associations between assets. Forexample, a particular license may implicate several patents.Conventional systems do not support the association of the intellectualproperty assets, and they certainly do not support a memorializedexplanation of the association. Even if a user is able to determine afew related intellectual property assets, the problem of determiningassociated intellectual property assets grows geometrically more complexwith the number of intellectual property assets.

Accordingly, I have determined that the complexities affecting theanalysis, use, accessing, researching, presenting, etc., of intellectualproperty and related information make it extremely difficult for acustomer to integrate information in various scenarios. I havedetermined that a customer might want to determine, e.g. which patents(or other intellectual property documents) are implicated by and/orrelated to, for example, a license for a particular product, aparticular product, a component (integrated into several products), acompany, a corporate division, a particular technology, a particularsub-technology or a category under a particular technology, a type ofservice, or other, perhaps company—specific, criteria. I have furtherdetermined that a customer might want to ascertain the intellectualproperty documents that are related on multiple levels, optionallyincluding details relating to the relationships. Further, a customermight desire to annotate one or more intellectual property documents.There exists a profound need for such a method and/or system.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

I therefore propose to provide, inter alia, methods and/or computersystems that will allow intellectual property documents and informationto be associated, annotated and/or linked, including, e.g., the abilityto tag (or otherwise label) intellectual property documents withattributes. Optionally, I propose that the system provide attributesand/or the user may define attributes, potentially at multiple levels.Optionally, I propose to utilize the attributes in filteringintellectual property documents, e.g., in reports. Related tools areoptionally included.

Consequently, the present invention alleviates the deficiencies ofconventional techniques described above. Aspects of the presentinvention provide for the significant improvement of the management ofintellectual property, by for example, enabling personnel to labelattributes of various intellectual properties and related documents of acompany, its partners, and/or competitors, and/or to manage theattributes, to utilize attributes in filtering intellectual propertydocuments, for example, in reports. An optional aspect of the presentinvention provides that attributes may be inherited via specifying alower level attribute.

By way of example, a clause within a sublicense agreement may referencea paragraph within an original license agreement, a spreadsheetcontaining royalty payment schedules, a copyright registration, and/or aphotograph of the cover of a book. Furthermore, a clause within thesublicense may have textual and/or multimedia annotations, explanations,etc. containing comments by attorneys and/or corporate managementemphasizing specific aspects of importance about the related item.Another example is a product specification referencing an individualclaim of a patent, specific paragraphs of a license agreement, aregistered trademark, a product web page on the Internet, and/or a linkto a product drawing file. The reference to the patent claim maycontain, e.g., a conformance analysis of why the product does notviolate a competitor's patent or why a particular patent may be invalidover a particular prior art reference or why a competitor's productinfringes a particular patent, or a comment identifying how a keycompetitive feature of the product is protected by the patent.

One or more embodiments of the present invention may be capable ofvarious configurations to adapt to user needs. For example, in one ormore embodiments it may be used in conjunction with a customer site witha single server containing all data, for use by a small number ofsimultaneously connected users. Alternatively, one or more embodimentsmay be set up for use in conjunction with a multi-server distributedenvironment, for user, e.g., by a large number of simultaneouslyconnected users at a large corporate use site. In another embodiment,the invention supports users connected to an Internet backbone as partof a licensed service.

One or more embodiments of the present invention may provide for readilynavigating and/or annotating intellectual property documents.

One or more embodiments of the present invention optionally allow a userto download a set of related documents, for example to work offlinewhile disconnected from the server, and to reconnect and synchronizechanges with a server.

In accordance with the present invention, there are provided methods,systems and at least one computer-readable medium for managingattributes in association with electronic intellectual propertydocuments, implemented by a computer system. At least one embodiment ofthe present invention includes providing one or more attribute types,having attributes including at least one attribute; providing one ormore documents; associating the document(s) with the attribute(s), anddetermining one or more references corresponding to the document(s);associating one or more other documents with the attribute(s) anddetermining one or more other references corresponding to the otherdocument(s); and storing the reference(s) and the other reference(s) inassociation with the attribute(s), for later retrieval of thedocument(s) and/or the other document(s).

Optionally, one or more embodiments of the present invention includedetermining one or more groups of documents responsive to a user, thegroup including the document(s) and/or the other document(s).

Optionally, one or more embodiments of the present invention includeorganizing the group(s) of documents, wherein the documents areorganized by one or more of: at least one field therein, and at leastone attribute previously associated therewith. Optionally, the group ofdocuments omits a lapsed document.

One or more embodiments of the present invention includes assigning thedocument(s) to one or more other groups. According to one or moreembodiments of the present invention, the document(s) is: XML format,binary format, image data, audio data, an interpretive file, and/orvideo data.

Optionally, one or more embodiments of the present invention includessearching for the document(s) based on criteria including theattribute(s) and/or the attribute type(s).

One or more embodiments of the present invention provide for accessingthe document(s) from the attribute(s) and the reference(s) stored inassociation therewith. One or more embodiments of the present inventionprovide for displaying information characterizing the document(s).

Optionally, the attribute(s) is associated with one or more users, thedocument(s) being accessible by users including the mentioned user,further comprising limiting access to the attribute(s) to the user(s)associated therewith. Optionally, the attribute(s) further includes: areference to a URL, a reference to another file, and/or user-providedtext.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, thedocument(s) and the other document(s) are representative of: aninvention disclosure document, a patent document, a trademark document,a copyright document, a product description document, a contractdocument, a license document, a sui generis protection document, adesign registration document, a trade secret document, and/or an opiniondocument.

One or more embodiments of the present invention provides forpreliminarily determining (or customizing), for the attribute type(s),the attribute(s).

One or more embodiments of the present invention provide for storing thedocument(s) and the other document(s) for later retrieval.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, theattribute(s) is selected from attribute types representative of: aproduct and/or a service. Optionally, the attribute types furtherinclude: an actor, a user entity, a current owner, and/or a project.

One or more embodiments of the present invention provides one or moresub-attribute type associated with the attribute type(s), and whereinthe sub-attribute type(s) has second attributes including one (or more)associated with the attribute(s), wherein the attribute type(s) inheritsthe attribute(s), responsive to an association of the secondattribute(s) with the document(s).

Optionally, one or more embodiments of the present invention provide forexporting the attribute(s) and the attribute type(s).

One or more embodiments of the present invention provide for utilizingthe attribute(s) as criteria for: searching, retrieving, reporting,and/or viewing the document(s).

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, theattribute(s) is utilized in combination with one or more of: (i) theattribute type(s), (ii) one or more sub-types of the attribute type(s),(iii) a content of one or more fields in the document(s); (iv) a type ofone or more fields in the document(s); and/or (vi) information derivedfrom the field(s) in the document(s).

Optionally, the reference(s) corresponds to the serial number of thedocument(s).

There has thus been outlined, rather broadly, the more importantfeatures of the invention in order that the detailed description thereofthat follows may be better understood, and in order that the presentcontribution to the art may be better appreciated. There are, of course,additional features of the invention that will be described hereinafterand which will form the subject matter of the claims appended hereto.

In this respect, before explaining at least one embodiment of theinvention in detail, it is to be understood that the invention is notlimited in its application to the details of construction and to thearrangements of the components set forth in the following description orillustrated in the drawings. The invention is capable of otherembodiments and of being practiced and carried out in various ways.Also, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminologyemployed herein are for the purpose of description and should not beregarded as limiting.

As such, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the conception,upon which this disclosure is based, may readily be utilized as a basisfor the designing of other structures, methods and systems for carryingout the several purposes of the present invention. It is important,therefore, that the claims be regarded as including such equivalentconstructions insofar as they do not depart from the spirit and scope ofthe present invention.

Further, the purpose of the forgoing abstract is to enable the U.S.Patent and Trademark Office and the public generally, and especially thescientists, engineers and practitioners in the art who are not familiarwith patent or legal terms or phraseology, to determine quickly from acursory inspection the nature and essence of the technical disclosure ofthe application. The abstract is neither intended to define theinvention of the application, which is measured by the claims, nor is itintended to be limiting as to the scope of the invention in any way.These together with other objects of the invention, along with thevarious features of novelty that characterize the invention, are pointedout with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part ofthis disclosure. For a better understanding of the invention, itsoperating advantages and the specific objects attained by its uses,reference should be had to the accompanying drawings and descriptivematter in which there is illustrated preferred embodiments of theinvention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWING(S)

The above-mentioned and other features and advantages of the presentinvention will be better understood from the following detaileddescription of the invention with reference to the accompanyingdrawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram illustrating a system architectureproviding for annotating intellectual property documents and data,according to one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of one example of a system for use inconnection with analyzing and managing intellectual property documents,according to one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a combined functional block diagram with data flow,illustrating an exemplary data manager according to one or moreembodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a user interface, illustrating editing of an intellectualproperty document, according to one or more embodiments of the presentinvention.

FIG. 5 is a user interface illustrating an example of annotation for anintellectual property document, according to one or more embodiments ofthe present invention.

FIG. 6 is a user interface illustrating an example of an additionalwindow for linking a selected document to another intellectual propertydocument, according to one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a user interface illustrating an example of a report view of amarked-up document, according to one or more embodiments of the presentinvention.

FIG. 8 is a user interface illustrating an example of a map view of amarked up document, according to one or more embodiments of the presentinvention.

FIG. 9 is a functional block diagram with data flow, illustrating anexemplary data server according to one or more embodiments of thepresent invention.

FIG. 10 is a functional block diagram with data flow, illustrating anexemplary data analyzer according to one or more embodiments of thepresent invention.

FIG. 11 is a block diagram, illustrating data flow for splitting anannotated document into annotated data and document data, according toone or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 12 is a block diagram illustrating data flow for merging theannotation data and document data of FIG. 11 into the annotateddocument, according to one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 13 is a block diagram illustrating an example association ofexternal data with a document that has been annotated, in accordancewith one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIGS. 14A-B are a flow chart illustrating merging of document data withannotation data to produce a marked-up representation of the document,according to one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 15 is a flow chart illustrating splitting a marked-uprepresentation of a document into annotation data and document data,according to one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 16 is a linked diagram illustrating an example of annotatedintellectual property documents and data, according to one or moreembodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 17 is a linked diagram illustrating another example of annotatedintellectual property documents and data, according to one or moreembodiments of the present invention.

FIGS. 18A-B are a flow chart of an example of annotating a documentand/or linking the document to another document (or portion thereof),according to one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 19 is a flow chart illustrating an example of traversingintellectual property documents via links in an annotation thereto,according to one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 20 is a block diagram illustrating a computer architecture, for usein connection with one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 21 is an illustration of a computer appropriate for use inconnection with one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 22 is a block diagram illustrating the internal hardware of thecomputer of FIG. 21.

FIG. 23 is an illustration of an alternative computer appropriate foruse in connection with one or more embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 24 is an example flowchart for determining attributes to beassociated with intellectual property documents, according to one ormore embodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 25 is an example flowchart for grouping intellectual propertydocuments into a project, according to one or more embodiments of thepresent invention.

FIG. 26 is an example flow chart for using attributes to filter throughintellectual property documents, according to one or more embodiments ofthe present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The following detailed description includes many specific details. Theinclusion of such details is for the purpose of illustration only andshould not be understood to limit the invention. Throughout thisdiscussion, similar elements are referred to by similar numbers in thevarious figures, for ease of reference. In addition, features in oneembodiment may be combined with features in other embodiments of theinvention.

Intellectual property information regarding intellectual propertydocuments by a customer, intellectual property service provider,government entity or other source has been collected. Likely suchinformation is extracted and deposited into one or more databases.Ultimately at least a portion of such intellectual property informationis presented to an end user on behalf of a customer, such as via anintellectual property application, which may be executing locally, orvia a web site over the World Wide Web, i.e., the Internet. For ease ofdescription, such a collection of information will be referred to hereinas “database”, although it should be recognized that the informationmight collected in other formats as well, and that an intellectualproperty application might not be restricted to data stored in adatabase.

The association between selected intellectual property information isrealized and optionally annotated. The annotation enables users toannotate images and text in intellectual property, such as, e.g., patentdrawings. Those annotations are saved and optionally categorized. Forexample, annotated drawings or images are saved in the context ofprojects in order that notes and other thoughts of the user arememorialized and tied to a project.

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram illustrating a system architectureproviding for annotating intellectual property documents and data,according to one or more embodiments of the present invention. In theillustrated example, the system is realized as an intellectual propertyportal 111 on a general purpose computer, communicating with a network,e.g., the Internet 105. A user 107 accesses the portal 111 via theInternet 105. A document workspace 109 is provided on a computer for theuser 107. Applications for locating, viewing and annotating intellectualproperty documents and data are provided on the portal 111. In thepresent example, the applications include an editing view 119, anannotation view 117, a map view 115, a report view 113, a searchapplication 101, and a browse application 103. Any application programuseful for searching or browsing intellectual property documents may beutilized to implement the search application 101 or the browseapplication 103. Intellectual property documents and data may be storedin any appropriate manner. In the present example, the intellectualproperty documents and data are stored in a patents database 131, atrademarks database 125, a copyrights database 127, a licenses database129, and an opinions database 123. In this example, the opinionsdatabase 123 is separate from the portal 111. The system also includesstorage of the annotations in an annotations database 121. The useraccesses one or more of the intellectual property documents togetherwith any annotations, e.g., by searching or browsing for the selecteddocument. The user may manipulate, annotate, and/or link one or moreselected documents via one or more of the applications. The annotatedand/or linked document(s) are stored into the appropriate databases bythe user. Access to annotations and/or annotated documents optionally islimited, e.g., by corporate affiliation of the user and annotation, byuser, by express permission to one or more users, etc.

A system design for use in connection with one or more embodiments ofthe present invention, as illustrated in FIG. 2, may advantageouslycomprise a number of interconnected components. Each component may focuson a specific task, and advantageously provides and/or utilizes anApplication Programming Interface (API) to communicate with othercomponents within the system, according to the illustrated realizationof one example system. Components may include, for example, one or moredata servers 205-211, a data manager 201, one or more analyzer views113, 115, 117, 119, a management console 221, and/or a watch agent 223.Components and/or functions thereof may be omitted, replaced, subdividedand/or combined and still remain within the scope of the invention. Thedata servers 205-211 provide access to the data representing theintellectual property documents; the data analyzer 203 provides userinterfaces to obtain, analyze and/or traverse intellectual propertydocuments; and the data manager 201 breaks down documents into storableunits and builds up documents for the user interfaces.

In accordance with one or more embodiments of the present invention,scalability may be provided by the logical and/or physical separation ofdata server 211 functionality from the data manager 201. For example,the data manager may reside with one (or more) data server on e.g., asingle machine storing all patent, licensing, and annotation data. Asone of many alternatives, the data manager may connect to multiple dataservers, each running on a separate machine, and each storing only aportion of the data.

According to one or more optional realizations of the present invention,offline storage and/or operation may be provided for example, by adocument manager, discussed below, which stores some or all working datalocally on the user's machine, and/or by API functionality to retrieveand store documents from the data manager 201.

FIG. 2 illustrates one or more embodiments of a general overallarchitecture for use in connection with the present invention. Thisfigure illustrates internal architecture, useful for illustrating theconcepts in relation to the invention. Portions of the architecture maybe omitted and/or replaced and/or combined when used in connection withcertain embodiments of the present invention. This example of one ormore embodiments of the present invention illustrates an optional 3-tierarchitecture, including the data server tier, the data manager tier, andthe data analyzer tier. More or fewer tiers may be utilized, in otherembodiments of the present invention. The data server (or multiple dataservers) 205-211, according to one or more embodiments of the presentinvention, may provide for storage, versioning, indexing and/orsearching of (possibly a subset of) document data (e.g., XML) annotationdata, and/or image data.

Optionally, there may be provided one or more data servers 205 a-c, 207,209, 211 amongst which the data server functions may be divided. In thepresent example, several data servers are provided. Optionally, amultiple data server format may house one or more sets of relatedinformation. In this illustration, one data server might contain theentire United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) database;and/or one data server might contain multiple databases. According toone example alternative, the related information (in this case, theUSPTO database) may be spread over multiple data servers 105 a-c.According to a convenient realization, for example, one data server maycontain only the patents ending in “1”, another server might containpatents ending in “2”, a third might contain patents ending in “3”, andso on; according to this example, there are 10 servers, across which isdistributed, preferably in a logical manner, preferably the entire USPTOdatabase. By distributing the data servers and functions, one or moreembodiments of the present invention may provide for a scalable solutionfor storing generalized data used by the system.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, the datamay be stored in its original format. Alternatively, it may bereformatted at some point or points prior to storage. The format for thedata that the USPTO currently provides data for patents is XML, amark-up language which is fairly similar to HTML. XML is a generalizedsyntax for creating a document structure and tags, unlike HTML, whichhas predefined tags. XML essentially leaves the meaning of those tags tothe developer of the dialect. In this case the USPTO has defined theindividual tags that exist within this language and the meaning tag ofeach. The system may use the syntax as provided by one or morepatent/trademark offices, government, and/or commercial data providers,or optionally, the syntax may be converted, e.g., into one or morestandard formats. In the illustrated example, the USPTO patent database(both text (XML) and image data) is distributed across three dataservers 205 a, b and c.

Similarly, one or more embodiments of the present invention mayaccommodate other data and/or other formats, e.g., an XML schema forlicense agreements. Such a schema for a license agreement mayaccommodate, e.g., typical, usual, optional and/or advanced elementsthat are available within the license agreement, e.g., a preamble,definition section, individual definitions, paragraphs, clauses,sections, articles, etc. In the illustrated example, license documentsare stored on the data server 209.

As illustrated in the example of FIG. 2, each data server in amulti-data server embodiment within the system may contain all, a subsetand/or a portion of the information that is available to the user. Dataserver 5 209 stores, in the present example, license data, copyrightdata, and trademark data. These databases are likely to be much smallerthan the USPTO patent database. Hence, a single server may store morethan one type of data. Optionally, non-USPTO data is included.

According to the illustrated example, data server 4 207 storesannotation data (discussed below), e.g., having annotationscorresponding to some of the patents and/or licenses. The annotationdata may include, e.g. electronic mark-ups that attorneys or other userswould make, e.g., in connection with a document. Further in thisexample, data servers 1 through 3 store the patent text and image dataof the USPTO patent database (or a portion thereof).

The optional data manager 201 may pull together the data that may bedistributed across one or more servers. The data manager advantageouslyprovides a single cohesive and comprehensive management of a givendatabase. The data manager, according to one or more embodiments of thepresent invention, provides for the seamless distribution, coordination,and searching, of documents (e.g., XML), or merging of annotation data(e.g., XML), and image data across one or more data servers. Itoptionally may support caching of search requests and/or results, and/orreplication of data to and/or from remote servers.

Reference is made to FIG. 3, providing one or more example embodimentsof the data manager 201 architecture. The data manager may provide anobject API 319 having services to receive requests and/transmitinformation to/from the data analyzer 323, e.g., to insert, update,delete, and/or request document data, e.g. XML data. The object API mayhave and/or retrieve binary data, such as for images and/or sound, forexample. XML data requests may be further processed within the datamanager; and, if appropriate, passed to a data server 321; binaryrequests may be passed on through to the underlying data server 321.

Consider for example that documents are provided in XML format, and thatannotations for each document are provided as annotation data entitiestherein. When an XML data insertion or update occurs, the XML data isfirst parsed by an XML parser 308. This parser maybe driven by a mark-upschema 317, which identifies XML tags within the document for annotationdata entities, and the relationship of the XML tags to the document dataentities. The annotation data entities are extracted from the XMLdocument. They may be used to create an annotation XML data stream. Theremainder of the XML data, that is, the potentially revised documentwithout the annotations, may be used to create a document XML datastream.

Where multiple data servers are provided, an optional connection manager301 may be provided, to identify which data server(s) stores the data atissue if distributed, e.g., the document data, the annotation dataand/or the image data, such as by maintaining a mapping. Image data maybe stored on the same data server as the document data or may be storedelsewhere.

Continuing with the above example of XML documents, when an XML requestoccurs, the data manager 201 retrieves the document XML data and theannotation XML data from their respective one or more data servers. Itthen parses both these XML data streams with one or more XML parsers308. Using the mark-up schema 317, it embeds the annotations from theannotation XML data within the corresponding tagged elements of thedocument XML data, and with annotation merge logic 307, merges bothstreams into a single XML document.

When a search request occurs, search and result merge logic 303optionally looks up each keyword in the one or more thesauri of the dataserver(s), and any match is added to a search keyword list. The searchrequest may contain a list of searchable fields appropriate to thedocuments being searched (e.g. Abstract, Inventor, Claims, etc. forpatents), and/or the scope of the search (e.g. Patent, Copyright,Annotation, etc.). The search is then executed on the relevant DataServers, the results are collected, and they are returned to the caller.Search results optionally may be returned from the data server inpartial result groupings, such as of a specified fixed size; thispermits the data manager 201 to satisfy a search request quickly, whiledeferring much of the processing overhead for result fetching untilactually needed.

If a user is browsing back and forth through a number of items returnedfrom a search, it is likely that they will request the same documentrepeatedly within a short period of time. An optional cache manager 311maintains a mapping of client search requests to search results. If arequest is repeated while the result is cached, the result may bereturned from an Image and XML cache 313 through the cache manager 311,instead of generating a new data server search request.

When the optional change notification event is received from a dataserver, it is passed in to the change notification handler 309, thenthrough to the object API 319. It may be passed to an optionalreplication service, which maintains a list of registered downstreamdata managers. One or more data managers may be registered forreplication of information, as identified e.g., by data server and itemtype, and will be notified of such changes. A notified data server mayrequest the information. The replication service 315 maintains a queuing316 of notifications for those registered data managers that areunreachable or are flagged for queuing. The optional change notificationevent may provide the basis for a subscription service, in order toprovide customers with updated latest patent and trademark information.The optional change notification event and replication service may beused for enabling a system to distribute to multiple data servers, evenif distributed around the world, while maintaining synchronizationbetween them. The optional change notification event may be provided tothe cache manager 311, which may be used to enable it to flush an imageand XML cache 313 of outdated items.

Reference is made back to FIG. 2. According to one or more embodimentsof the present invention, an optional search engine locates storeddocuments by performing searches on phrases and/or individual words. Forexample, the search engine interface may provide a column for proceedingword and another for following word. As a further example, to accessintellectual property patent data, when doing a search, a search requestmay result in a hit to all three of the Data Servers 205 a, b, c inparallel. According to one or more embodiments of the present invention,the data manager 201 is responsible for coordinating among thedistributed Data Servers where multiple data servers have potentiallyrelevant data, and for being aware of the range of specific data on eachdata server. If a search request is received, the data manager 201 maybroadcast that request to all of the relevant data servers (three in theillustrated example), receive the search request results returned fromthose data servers, and then merge the results back together again andcreate a single common results set. The advantage of distributing asearch is that one may speed up the search, average-out the effect ofmultiple users, and/or numerous requests being received, and load-levelthe users working with an individual patent and its image data. The datamanager 201 thus provides an optional second logical level, where itpulls together the content of the data servers, and/or provides amongother things a view into a company's intellectual property database.

An optional third logical level is the data analyzer 203. The dataanalyzer 203 performs, inter alia, formatting of information into arepresentation that is user friendly, so that a user may read and/oredit. The data analyzer 203 may include prompting the user forannotations, for accepting annotation data, for displaying data, forcreating reports, for creating a document map which demonstrates therelationships of one set of information to another, etc.

Reference is made to FIGS. 4-8, illustrating several example windows401, 501, 601, 701, and 801, open within a user interface according toone or more embodiments of the present invention. One or more aspects ofthe present invention assist in working with relationships betweendocuments and/or portions thereof.

The user interfaces to the intellectual property documents areoptionally enabled by the data analyzer 203, illustrated in FIG. 2.Reference is made to FIGS. 1 and 4-7. In this example, the license inthe editing window 401 (FIG. 4) correlates to the editing view 119 (FIG.1). A report window 701 (FIG. 7) demonstrates the report view 113 (FIG.1), a map window 801 (FIG. 8) demonstrates the map view 115 (FIG. 1) anda mark-up window 501 (FIG. 5) represents the annotation view 117 (FIG.1).

Reference is now made to FIG. 4. The user in this example has retrievedan intellectual property document to edit and/or annotate, e.g., alicense, into an editing window 401. One or more aspects of the presentinvention provide that the user may logically subdivide that documentinto sections. Those sections may then be related to sections withinthat or another document. The relationship between one document andanother, and/or between one section in one document and a section inanother document (or the document itself) may be annotated. Theannotation allows a user, e.g., an attorney who is analyzing thisinformation, to indicate within a document, for example, an issue, theresult of an analysis, how this portion of this document relates to thatportion of that document, etc.

Referring again to FIG. 4, the intellectual property document 403 (inthis example, the license) is displayed in the editing window 401. Theediting window 403 presently displays that portion of the documentencompassing “Article 1,” “Section 1.1,” which in the example isentitled “Trade Secret License.” In one or more embodiments of thepresent invention, one or more active portions 405, e.g., “Trade SecretLicense”, may be outlined, and/or highlighted such as in red on thescreen, in order to indicate that this is an active portion 405 of thedocument being viewed. A further indication, e.g., a special highlightor color, e.g., optionally may be used to indicate that there is anannotation associated therewith, e.g. a possible conformance issue or afailed conflict.

By way of example of a possible use of one aspect of the invention, if auser is performing, e.g. evaluation of a license against a patent or aproduct against a patent, for each of the claims in the patent, the usermay be viewing parts of the license and the claims one at a time andindicating that a certain aspect of this product, license, or documentfails to conform to some aspect of this patent claim. The user mayselect one of several standard notations reflecting, for example, astandard, system provided relation, and/or a super-user-customizedattribute concerning the respective documents, e.g. that a product orlicense, etc. is in violation of this patent claim, or may be inviolation of this patent claim, or is not in violation of this patentclaim. The user may wish to add other text, annotations, references toother documents or URL's or files, etc. to the document being viewed.Those thoughts, however they may be phrased or indicated, are importantto capture. An attorney or other user going through an intellectualproperty document, such as a patent, may indicate that a product,license, etc. does not violate this patent, claims 1, 2, 3, etc. becauseof annotated reasons, or indicate the need to look into this further,and/or indicate the need for a second opinion or any other indication asdesired. Multiple users may each provide separate annotations.

The attorney or other user may review, edit and/or annotate an agreementor other intellectual property document in the editing window 401 forexample by selecting a section, or traverse the document section bysection. (The document may be subdivided previously, currently, and/orsubsequently into sections automatically (e.g., within the XML format)manually, and/or semi-manually.) In the present example, beginning,e.g., with Section 1.1 the user may select a portion of the document inthe editing window 401 to add an annotation or mark-up data.

Reference is now made to FIG. 5, showing an example mark-up window 501,to interact with the user to obtain annotations. The mark-up window 501pops up in response to a user indication that he wishes to annotate adocument (or portion thereof). In the present example, the user mayselect one or more type of pre-defined notations, e.g., “conformance”503, view “notes” 507, view a history 509 of changes to this section,and/or view some user-defined attributes 511, and/or categories or linksto images or web pages, etc.

In the illustrated example, “Harvey Wallenbarger” is the user andselects Section 1.1 in the editing window 401 (shown in FIG. 4). Inresponse to the selection, the system obtains the user's annotation viathe mark-up window 501. In the mark-up window 501, in “conflicts” underthe “conformance” tab 503, the user selects “possible” indicating thatthere is a possible conformance violation; the user may alternatively orin addition type in text comments, e.g., to memorialize concerns aboutthe possible conformance violation. By selecting at the top of themark-up window 501, one or more embodiments of the present inventionincludes a drop down list box or chooser 505 that provides a mechanismfor choosing a related intellectual property document, for example oneof several documents that the user may be working with, thereby relatingthe section and/or its annotation to a section of another (or the same)intellectual property document. In the illustrated example, the usernotes a relationship between the annotated license section 1.1 to asection of another intellectual property document.

Optionally, the other document or other section of the same document isdisplayed in an optional further editing window 601, shown in FIG. 6.Optionally, a selected section 603 of the related document ishighlighted.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention,annotation is realized as a manually-driven approach. For example, auser goes through a document one item at a time and performs anannotation. The process of annotating is preferably a manually-drivenprocess, for several reasons. For example, one person may use the term“cup” but another person may choose to use the designation “a liquidcontaining dispensing container” for the same object. To create anautomated mapping between those two designations may be possible, usingfor example a thesaurus, where the user may add synonyms that expand thescope of the search, etc. Nevertheless, to be able to parse-out thecomplex language that tends to appear in intellectual propertydocuments, and to be able to accurately perform an analysis againstsimilarly complex wording by a completely different person is, may bebetter done manually or semi-automatically.

Reference is now made to FIG. 7. One or more embodiments of the presentinvention optionally provide for a report window 701. The report window701 provides a summary of the mark-ups to, e.g., the selected document.In this example, the report window 701 includes a summary 709 ofmark-ups including a count of sections and types of mark-ups.Optionally, each section 703 and sub-section 705 also is summarized. Asection or subsection summary optionally includes a mark-up summary 707,with, e.g., the standard notation type, any reference(s), author, date,and/or other annotation data. The present example indicates that one ormore users has reviewed this license (or other document), checked itagainst a particular document or documents, and summarized some or allof the mark-up data and associated portions of the document that havebeen annotated.

The optional map window 801 illustrated in FIG. 8 provides a map of thesections of the mark-up document 809 and the related intellectualproperty documents noted in annotations. In the present example, the mapwindow 801 includes a visual representation 803 of each document sectionand a summary 805 of each related document noted in a mark-up. A mapline 807 indicates a relation between document sections and subsections,and a connection 808 is indicated between documents andsections/subsections.

Other components, plug-ins, reports, and/or tools may be provided toview, search, edit, annotate, link and/or mark-up intellectual propertydocuments, in accordance with one or more embodiments of the presentinvention. The view and window functionality, for example, may becombined, omitted, and/or replaced and/or implemented in an alternativeuser interface in alternative embodiments of the present invention.

Reference is again made to FIG. 1. The mark-up data optionally is storedlogically and/or electronically embedded within the original document,e.g., as an annotation. According to one or more embodiments of thepresent invention, the system may host most or all of the databases 121,125, 127, 129, 131 on web servers, for use by any of a large number ofusers. According to one or more embodiment of the present inventionannotated documents are stored, e.g., locally and/or remotely. Accordingto one or more embodiments of the present invention, intellectualproperty documents are linked to annotations, and the documents areshared.

If the users are unaffiliated with each other, however it would beundesirable to have these unrelated users accessing, e.g., the samepatent, marking it up, and physically embedding additional informationtherein. It would not be suitable to make that information available toall of those users. Consequently, according to one or more embodimentsof the present invention, the mark-up data is maintained so that theseparate and/or unrelated users are protected from disclosure to eachother. Accordingly, the mark-up data optionally is separately maintainedfrom the document data and is correlated to a user and/or group ofusers.

Further, the mark-up data preferably is seamlessly associated with thedocument information, and according to one or more embodiments of thepresent invention is preferably presented to the user as a unitarydocument. Despite the unitary appearance, when the user is finishedworking on this document, the document and mark-up informationoptionally is broken into components, optionally each being stored inthe appropriate and/or separate storage. Optionally, the document andmark-ups are stored together.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, there areprovided two (or more) streams of data, corresponding respectively tothe mark-up(s) and the document(s). These data streams are mergedtogether into a single document, and that merged document is presentedto the user and/or worked on as a single logical document. When thatwork is complete or the user otherwise is done, then the document issplit up into two (or more) different streams corresponding to themark-up(s) and the document(s). Preferably, the document is in XMLformat, but could be in other formats.

Reference is made again to FIG. 3, a block diagram for one or moreembodiments of a data manager 201, also showing communications to/from adata server 321 and to/from a data analyzer 323. The data manager 201may, in accordance with one or more embodiments of the presentinvention, provide for splitting and merging annotations and documents.In the illustration of FIG. 3, a document with annotations is split intodata streams via annotation split 305, and merged into an annotateddocument via annotation merge 307. Consider an example data flow throughthe data manager 201: an “XML request” from the data analyzercommunications 323 is received by an object API 319. The “XML request”indicates a particular XML intellectual property document (optionallywith annotations) to be retrieved, e.g., to be accessed by the dataanalyzer. The request is received by annotation merge component 307 inthe data manager 201. The data manager 201 determines that it needs toobtain one (or more) XML document corresponding to the document data forthe intellectual property document, and also one (or more) XML documentcorresponding to the annotation data. The annotation merge component 307issues a request to retrieve these two (or more) documents. Considerthat one of these, for illustration purposes, is a patent document andthe other is annotation data marking up the patent. The annotation dataincludes, within the set of its information, an association between oneor more individual annotations, and the location of the item or sectionwithin the patent document (the “entity”) that the annotation refers to,for example, specific claims in a patent. So, if (as in this example)the user has annotated a particular claim in the specified patent, thenthe annotation includes a reference corresponding to the identifier forthe entity corresponding to that claim. (There are a number of ways bywhich an “entity” within a document could be uniquely identified, e.g.,offset from document start, logical division, etc.) According to one ormore embodiments of the present invention, the annotation mergecomponent 307 processes document data and annotation data (e.g., with anXML parser 308), identifies the one or more entities, within thedocument with a particular annotation, extracts the annotation (e.g., asan XML mark-up fragment), and embeds the annotation within the sectionof the document (e.g., an XML section) for the referenced entity withinthe document.

In accordance with one or more embodiments of the present invention,there are provided two (or more) different documents, one containingannotations and the other containing the document, both including arespective series of entities. The annotation document(s) is broken upinto the individual entities; the documents are parsed and it isdetermined where the annotation entities go in the document; and thedocument is fattened into a marked-up document. The fattened mark-updocument is then returned to the data analyzer as the document in theproper format (e.g., XML) via data analyzer communication 323.

The data analyzer then may, at that point, work with the mark-updocument as if it is a single document. That the marked-up documentoriginated from two or three or more different sources, according to oneor more embodiments of the present invention, is transparent to the dataanalyzer. According to one or more embodiments of the present invention,the data analyzer receives, processes, and/or acts on the marked-updocument as a unitary document, and when done, returns it as a unitarydocument. Optionally, the data analyzer works with the documentencompassing more than one file, e.g., separate document and annotationdata, multiple files for document sections, etc.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, the datamanager 201 includes one or more annotation split components 305,optionally driven by a mark-up schema 317. The mark-up schema 317identifies which types of entities belong in a document (e.g., a patent)and which types of entities belong in an annotation. In scanning throughthe mark-up or expanded document, the system may identify the one ormore entities that are an annotation entity. The schema identifies theannotation entities, such as in XML. Further, the system can identifythat a particular annotation entity is related to a particular parentdocument (or entity within a parent document) and may obtain the uniqueidentifier for that parent associated back with the annotation entity.It may then start building a new annotation document. So, in this waythe system then supports the collapsing of the expanded mark-up documentfrom the analyzer back into its normal form, extracting the annotations,building another annotation document, and then inserting data for theannotation and/or document back into the Data Server.

In the case of a patent, for example, the original document may bemarked as read only, so the user cannot edit the original document.Optionally, the annotation split logic determines whether the documentis read-only, thereby avoiding the need to examine edits to the originaldocument, e.g. the original patent document. Consequently, for aread-only document, the annotation split logic 305 may review themark-up document to extract the annotation information.

Reference is now made to FIG. 9, illustrating an example block diagramof one potential embodiment of the data server 205. According to one ormore embodiments of the present invention, one or more data servers 105retrieve/store documents and/or annotation data. According to one ormore embodiments of the present invention, the intellectual propertydocuments are stored separately from the annotation data. If desired,stored documents may be further subdivided, e.g., by intellectualproperty type (e.g., patent, license, trademark), or file format (e.g.,XML, .TIFF, .DOC)

Each data server may advantageously provide an object API 319 which,inter alia receives communications to/from a data manager 927, toinsert, update, delete, and/or request data in a format appropriate tothe document(s), annotation and/or image data, e.g., XML. Hence, wheredocuments and annotations are stored as, e.g., XML formatted datastreams, the data server may act as a repository for document and/orannotation data.

When an XML data insertion or update occurs, the XML data advantageouslymay be stored within an XML repository 905, e.g., as a new revision ofthe document. The data server 205 receives the document or documents forstorage, e.g., through an XML update request. An XML update request isreceived through the object API 319 and is optionally sent to a dataversioning manager 917 to handle version updates.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, revisionsmay be managed by a data versioning manager 917. For example, when adata request occurs, the specified data may be retrieved from the dataversioning manager 917, the default optionally being to retrieve thelatest changes; however, a prior version may be specified within thedata request. The changed document, for example the annotation document,is inserted into, e.g., a data versioning manager 917, to accomplishversion control. There are several appropriate varieties of commerciallyavailable version control software. A version control program generallycompares the revised document against the prior copy, makes a list ofthe changes, and associates a new revision with those changes.Optionally, upon changing or updating a document, a change notification923 may be initiated for use by other processes.

The object API 319 may provide for services, e.g., to insert, update,delete, and/or retrieve binary data (such as for images). Such binarydata advantageously may be managed by the data versioning manager 917,and optionally a new revision may be created on update. The binary datatype may be stored advantageously with the binary data when inserted orupdated, e.g., in image data files 907. The various standard image types(e.g., JPEG, GIF, TIFF, etc.) optionally may be known to the system aspredefined data types. Optionally if an image is requested in adifferent known format than it is stored, conversion to the requestedformat may be performed, e.g., during retrieval; the may be doneadvantageously by one or more format converters 925.

One of the other aspects of the optional version control system is thatit is possible to label a particular version as having a given name. Thelabel then readily allows the system to associate a version of theannotation data with a version of the document data. (The annotationsand the document may be changing at different rates.) One or moreembodiments of the present invention provide the ability to create anassociated name with a revision, and the version control allows thesystem to then associate the various into version streams that arechanging at different rates.

The document being edited and/or marked up, e.g., a license agreement,may be changing at a very rapid rate initially but then those versionsmay slow down as the license matures. Conversely, the annotations maystart to grow rapidly or there may be a period when a company is workingwith a particular sub-licensing arrangement where those changes areoccurring rapidly as well. The XML document received from the dataanalyzer is then fit into the data versioning manager, 917. Relevantinformation optionally is stored into a repository 905 and that reflectsone part of the life cycle of that document.

The optional XML repository 905 provides the data versioning manager'slog file storage, for change records. It may use a form of datacompression that is typically used in version control systems wherestoring the changes that have happened from one revision to the next ofthe document.

When XML data is inserted or updated in an XML document, it may beparsed by an XML parser. Optionally, a configuration data section 919may be used to identify document structure. An index schema 913, forexample, may be used to identify XML tags that the XML parser 308 usesto break up the document into major sections; and a separate index maybe generated, e.g. by an index generator 915, and may be maintained foreach such section. During parsing, the various elements of the XML datastream may be identified. Their contents further may be parsed toextract the individual words within each element. These extracted wordsmay be compared against a table of unimportant words. If not matched inthe table, the word, together with the unique (fully qualified) XMLdocument name, plus its new revision number, if any, are may be storedin an index SQL database 903. Each entry (e.g. row) in the table may beidentified (via e.g., primary key) by the word, the document name, andthe revision, or in any other appropriate way. This table may contain aseparate field (e.g., column) for each section of the XML document,which may contain a count of the number of times (e.g. frequency) theword appears within that section. This realization may enable an indexsearcher 911 to place the most likely candidates at the beginning of thesearch results. Other realizations are possible, and will be appreciatedby one of skill in the art. The data server optionally includes athesaurus 909, which may reference and/or manage a table of synonyms tobe used, inter alia, in broadening the field of search. Thesaurus 909may maintain relevant data in any appropriate form, such as thesaurusSQL data 901.

When XML or binary data or other data is inserted, updated, or deletedin a document, a change notification 923 event optionally may begenerated. This may be broadcast to registered listeners (typically oneor more data managers). The change notification event may advantageouslyprovide underlying support for replication, and/or may be used fornotifying a user of modifications to a document that they may bereviewing.

Reference is made to FIG. 10, a block diagram of one embodiment of anarchitecture for the data analyzer 203. The data analyzer communicatesvia the data manager to one or more data servers on the backend of thesystem. From a user's perspective, one optionally is interacting withthe data analyzer 203 via a user interface, e.g., looking at a directoryand/or search view 1001 in order to locate, edit, or annotate adocument. For example, a user interface may present a directory as anavigable tree, allowing them to see one or more data managers inconnection with respective data servers. Optionally, a data manager maythen be responsible for presenting a relevant part of the navigabletree. Other means of displaying documents are equally appropriate, e.g.,the data analyzer may show a list of the patents by year issued, byclassification, etc. An interface is provided so that the user canidentify a document they want to work with. For example, a user may do asearch, e.g. for all documents containing the term “cup”, and bepresented with a list of search results, in order to access documents.

In any event, the user identifies the document of interest, and arequest for the document is sent by the data analyzer to the versionmanager 1003, e.g., for the latest version. In some cases, especially ifthe user is interested in looking at historical changes, then they maywant to obtain a prior version of that document. The version may beimportant if there is an association between the version of annotationdata and the version of the document data. Optionally, the systemretrieves multiple versions, e.g., to illustrate a particular moment inthe history of that document. The “XML Request” may be sent as a datamanager communication 1021 to a document manager 1005, and the requestedXML document may be returned. The document manager 1005 reads and thenstores that document into the document workspace 1007 according to oneor more embodiments of the present invention.

In the document worked on by the data analyzer 203, the annotation datapreferably is already merged with the original document data. The mergeddocument may be optionally stored into a document workspace 1007. Thepurpose of the document workspace 1007 is so that a user may remotelywork on a document, such as on a notebook computer not connected to anetwork. The data may be local in the workspace. Hence, if there is adisconnect from the original data sources, it is irrelevant in terms ofworking with the document.

When the remote user finishes edits or annotations on those one or moredocuments, they may then check those documents back into the data serverthrough the data analyzer and the data manager. When a document is to beworked with, it may be extracted from the document workspace 1007.Optionally, the document to be worked on is broken down into elements,if any. The document workspace 1007 may be, for example, a file in adirectory or a set of directories on a disk. To break the document intoelements, according to one or more embodiments of the present invention,the document is extracted from the document workspace, and fed into theXML parser 308 within a document object model 1011. The document objectmodel 1011 may be, e.g., standard binary representation or objectrepresentation of XML. An annotation schema 1017 may be referred towithin either the XML parser 308 and/or an XML generator 1013, forexample in the process of conversion to and from the object model 1019.

Once the XML data is broken down into an internal object representation,it is possible to look at an individual element, and determine, e.g.what is the content of that element in terms of text, name of the tag,text of the entity, tag name for the entity, and/or parent entity forit.

The merged or annotated document advantageously may be provided in XMLformat. The XML document is a structure with a balanced mark-up tag;each tag specifies a start and end of the section, and inside a sectionthere may be nested one or more start/end of another section one. Eachone of these start/end blocks may be a node. Each entity within thatbecomes a sub-node of a tree, creating an in-memory representation ofthe document tree that can be traversed to the parent node, child node,siblings, etc. The XML object model 1019 then contains the document dataand child nodes for each one of the paragraphs or items that have beenannotated. An annotation node contains the annotation data. It containsthe type of a mark-up, e.g., “conformance”, link to another document;textual node, etc.

Optionally, the user is provided one or more views in order to assistwith analysis of the document. Each of the different views 113, 115,117, 119 works with the merged document, according to one or moreembodiments of the present invention. The views 113, 115, 117, 119 maydetermine document format, e.g., by a reference to a document Schema1009. The user selects the function he wishes to perform on a document,e.g., view a report of the document 113; view a map of the document,links and mark-ups 115; view annotations 117; and/or edit the document119.

Reference is made to both FIGS. 4 and 10. The editing view 119, andediting window 201 illustrate one example of editing an intellectualproperty document, here, the license. The editing view examines the treestructure of the document or a nesting of levels within a document.Here, there are articles at the outermost levels, sections within that,and perhaps each section has clauses with sub-clauses. They may bebroken down separately. In this case, there is an article at theouter-most level, which is at the same level as the preamble, nestedwithin that article 1, “Grant of Licenses”, there is article 1.1 “TradeSecret License”. The entire text for “Trade Secret Licenses” may becontained within one node in the document object model. The “TradeSecret License” tag may be contained elsewhere within that node andembedded therein; “1.1 Trade Secret License” is a node, the child nodeof that is the text of the paragraph, etc. At another child node ofSection 1.1, there is provided a conformance mark-up (displayed asillustrated in FIG. 5 in the mark-up window 501). The data and/orattributes within the conformance mark-up would indicate that there is apossible conflict, together with the contents of the text within thatchild node or within a further child node thereof. This mark-upinformation for the illustrated conformance item may be associated withSection 1.1 as a separate node.

With regard to the illustrated Section 1.1, the user may select the nodeindicated as selected, e.g., by a frame 405, e.g. by a double click orclick inside the frame 405. The view may change to an editing view suchas a frame with scroll bars. The user may modify the content of theselected information. The system automatically updates the originaldocument information.

Reference is again made to both FIGS. 5 and 10, illustrating an examplemark-up window 501 and annotation view 117 within one or moreembodiments of a data analyzer architecture. The annotation view 117 andmark-up window 501 display the mark-up associated with document, and/ordocuments to which the document has been linked. For example, thesystems traverse the object-model tree in memory, locate annotationsthat exist within that tree, and locate the particular correspondingannotation(s) for items at a given level within the tree. It is alsoaware of the document object model in this example.

Reference is again made to both FIGS. 8 and 10, illustrating the mapview 115 together with the map window 801. The map view 115 reviews eachof the nodes within the selected document and displays them for example,within a tree or a map format. In the present example, it displays atree of boxes representing nodes within the document, nodes of otherdocuments connected from the selected document, and/or annotationsassociated with the document; and lines connecting the boxes together,representing links from the document (or nodes therein) to otherdocuments (or nodes therein) and/or associated annotations. It isworking off of the object model in this example.

Reference is again made to both FIGS. 7 and 10. The report view 113 andreport window 701 look at different elements of the document, nodes, andannotations and pull them together into a textual representation and/orsummary.

Advantageously, each of the views 113, 115, 117, 119 is provided as aplug-in to the system architecture, or similar fashion, to enable viewsto be added, omitted, supplemented and/or combined. Other views may beprovided, and the examples herein are provided merely for illustrationof the underlying principals. Further, although it is advantageous forthe views and/or data analyzer to work on one document as a whole, thedocument could be provided in multiple parts and/or with separateannotations.

Reference is now made to FIG. 11 showing an example embodiment of anoptional data flow for splitting an annotated document. In thisconceptual illustration, the annotation data stream 1123 is separatefrom the document data stream 1121, and the annotations and documentsare stored separately. The annotated document 1127 is received by theannotation split logic 1111 and is broken apart into document outputdata stream 1121 and annotation output data stream 1123, e.g., forstorage, e.g., in an XML document repository 1101 and an XML annotationrepository 1103. The document is parsed, e.g., by an XML parser 308, anda document mark-up schema 1115 is used to help identify nodes within thedocument and/or annotations. If implemented using XML, tags areassociated with the document, and the tags that are associated with theannotation.

Optionally, multiple versions of the document and/or annotation aremanaged, e.g., by respective versioning data management systems 1105,1107.

Preferably, any kind of annotation data, and/or any kind of documentdata, and/or format may be accepted. They are advantageously convertedinto XML, and then converted from XML into their native format.

FIG. 12 further illustrates that there may be two or more input datastreams 1203, 1205, retrieved from the XML document repository 1101 andXML annotation repository 1103, for a particular marked-up document,which are merged together in accordance with one or more embodiments ofthe present invention. At least one set of the input data streamscontains document data 1203, and at least one other set of the inputdata streams contains the annotation data 1205 to be applied to suchdocument data 1203. Annotation merge logic 1201 identifies locations inthe document into which to associate annotation data. If the document isXML, e.g., an XML parser 308 may utilize the document mark-up schema1115 to identify appropriate locations.

If more than one document is embedded within a stream, the system mayextract that document from multiple documents embedded within a singlestream, in order to obtain a single-document stream in any event.

The document data may optionally be provided in multiple documentstreams. In the case of the USPTO database, data from 1976 to 2000 isstored in a formatted character mode, which is non-standard and awkwardto handle. This information is stored as provided by the USPTO, inmultiple files per patent. Those files contain the abstract information,information about the inventor, a brief description of the claims,drawings, etc., so there are several documents for a given patent.Optionally, all of the annotations that relate to one other documentcould be stored in one annotation stream, and all of the annotationsrelating to yet a different document optionally may be stored in aseparate annotation data stream. There is no requirement that allannotations for a document come from or be stored into a singleannotation file.

Annotation merge logic 1201 inputs the input data streams 1203, 1205,and creates a mark-up representation of the document data, containing,referencing or including the annotation data, whether by structure orreference for associating the annotation data with its correspondingelements within the document data.

FIG. 12 further illustrates a document input data stream 1203 containingdocument data, and an annotation input data stream 1205 containingannotation data. The annotation merge logic 1201 outputs the result ofthe merge, i.e., a marked-up output data stream 1207. The representationof marked up output data can reference the annotation information inmany different ways. XML is fairly flexible and one advantageously maydefine the annotations at the top of the document as entities.Accordingly, one may take text as written, paste it into the XMLdocument and then re-parse the document, to further evaluate the XMLstructure.

The XML element is a macro that may be cut, pasted and inserted intoanother section of the document by reference. Hence, one alternativeaccording to one or more embodiments of the present invention is to takethe annotation data, define each one of them as elements at the top ofthe file, and then simply embed a reference to that element within eachof the paragraphs where it needs to be expanded. That provides themark-up copy, and it is semantically equivalent to embedding the actualmark-up entities within the entities that they refer to in the originaldocument.

There are several alternative ways to include the annotations, e.g.,write the annotation to a separate XML file, and use an includestatement to include the contents of that XML file. The concept of thedifferent ways of expanding into the mark-up document may be realignedin different ways, whether by inclusion of an element, the macro-typeelement, by doing an include to pull it in from another document, or byexpanding out the XML code for such representation further containing,referencing or including the annotation data.

There are a number of alternative ways in which the data may beprovided. The data stream could be, for example, a named pipe, data froma firewall, data from a disk, or data from a database, etc.

According to one or more alternative embodiments of the invention, thedocument data and/or the annotation data are stored in multiple dataservers, and may be accessed via one or more data managers. For example,data might be distributed among servers physically located, e.g., at aglobal headquarters of an information service, a corporate headquartersof a company, of a small law office, and/or a personal computer.

According to one or more alternative embodiments, the document dataand/or annotation data and/or marked up document are provided as datastreams. If a data stream contains image data or other binary data, oneof the data streams may include data for associating the image or binarydata with the annotation data and/or document data. This is useful if,for example, there are images that are associated with many of thepatents, trademarks, etc.

The image/binary data stream is not necessarily distinct from thedocument data stream or, if appropriate, the annotation data stream. Thedocument itself may contain a reference to an image, and/or theannotation itself may contain the reference. In one or more embodimentsof the present invention, on the other hand, the image/binary datastream might or might not be distinct from the document data or theannotation data.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention,annotation data may contain an association of an external data streamof, e.g. document data. The annotation data may have an association toexternal data, e.g., a hyperlink to a URL web page, a fully-qualifiedfile name on a network server, the document, a name of a program, a nameof a command string that can be executed through a command shell tostart, e.g., a computer aided design (CAD) system with a particular CADfile, etc.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention,associations may be formed between the version of an annotation with aversion of the document. Preferably, one or more of the input datastreams is from a versioning system, where there is provided a versioncontrol system, with multiple versions of a document and/or annotation.The system and/or user selects one of those document versions and/orannotation data, from the versioning system. Where both document dataand annotation data are provided from a versioning system, there may beone or multiple versioning systems.

Marked up input data streams may contain annotation text, or may berelated to a stream that contains annotation text. According to one ormore embodiments of the present invention, a marked up document may bereceived as an input data stream or marked up document coming in to aninput data stream. Annotation data may be included that is associatedwith, embedded in, or connected with the input data stream. The inputdata streams may include, inter alia, annotation data, and/or a markedup document representation. The system is capable of parsing such markedup document representation. The system may extract from such marked updocument representation the annotation data which may be placed into oneor more output data streams. The annotations are optionally strippedout, and made separate and distinct from the marked up data stream.

The system can review the marked up document, and may extract therelationship between the annotation data and the elements of thedocument.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, there isprovided a user interface. When the user selects a different kind ofannotation or when the content of the annotation changes, for example,the user may dynamically change how a particular user interface displaysthe information that it is working with.

Depending on the type of the annotation, e.g. a conformance test, one ormore parts of the user interface may display themselves differently thanfor history of the document. Consider that something is displayed in auser interface window. The user selects one of several differentannotations that they want to work with. The screen displays theinformation they are working, as it changes, in one form or another.

FIG. 13 illustrates an example of an annotated XML document 1301,according to one or more embodiments of the present invention. Theannotated XML document 1301 includes one or more document elements 1303embedded therein or otherwise associated therewith, with document data.One or more annotations 1305 are embedded or otherwise associatedtherewith. The annotation 1305 includes one or more annotation elements1307, which reference data, a document, an external data source, etc.The annotation element 1307 may have a link 1309 to zero, one or moreexternal data streams. In this example, a link 1309 is provided to datastreams including a document element data 1313 within another document1311; a URL 1315, e.g., “http://www.www.xyz/page”; and other externaldata source 1317, e.g., an executable shell script, image file, diagram,text file, document, or other file (voice, audio, video, binary, etc.)

Reference is now made to FIGS. 14A-B, illustrating an example flow chartfor merging document data together with annotation data to produce amarked-up representation of the document. At step 1401, the user selectsa document to be marked-up. At step 1403, the system determines whetherthe currently located document is the correct document for marking-up.If not, at step 1405, the system searches for the correct document. Oncethe correct document is obtained, at block 1407 the system determineswhether the current version is the correct version. If not, the systemsearches for the current version of the document at block 1409. Once thecorrect version of the current document is obtained, at block 1411, thesystem determines whether there is any annotation data for the selecteddocument, for the particular user. If the current annotation data is notthe correct annotation data, at block 1413, the system continues tosearch for the annotation data corresponding to the selected document,block 1417. At block 1415, if the current version of the annotation datais not the correct version of annotation data, then at block 1419 thesystem continues to search for the correct version of the annotationdata.

At block 1421, the system has the correct version of bother the selecteddocument and the annotation data, and the system proceeds to place thedocument data into a mark-up representation of the document. At block1423, the system loops to check for additional items of annotation data.For another item of annotation data, at block 1425 the system locatesthe corresponding element within the mark-up representation of thedocument, and at block 1429, the system, associates the annotation datawith the corresponding element of the document. When there are nofurther items of annotation data, at block 1427 the system provides theuser with a marked-up representation of the document. Processing ends atblock 1431.

Reference is now made to FIG. 15, illustrating one example of splittingof a marked-up representation of a document into annotation data anddocument data. At block 1501, the system obtains a marked-uprepresentation of the document. In blocks 1503, 1507, 1511, 1515 and1517, the system loops to obtain each element in the marked-uprepresentation of the document, determine the annotation(s) in theelement, and split out and store the annotations. In blocks 1505 and1509, the system separately stores the document data and annotationdata. Hence, in block 1503, the system, determines whether there isanother element in the document. If so, the system obtains the nextelement in the marked-up representation of the document at block 1507.At block 1511, the system checks whether the element includes one ormore annotations. If so, the system stores the annotation(s) in theannotation data at block 1515. At block 1517, the system stores theelement in the document data. The system loops back to block 1503 forthe next element in the document. Once done processing elements in thedocument, the system stores the document data, as a new version, forthis user, at block 1505; and stores the annotation data, as a newversion, for this user, at block 1509. At block 1513, the system returnsfrom processing.

FIG. 16 is a linked diagram illustrating an example of linked, annotatedintellectual property documents and data, according to one or moreembodiments of the present invention. Here, one or more users has linkedtogether several related intellectual property documents, in thisexample including a text document 1601 (titled “Power Projects”),technical description documents 1603, 1605 (titled “Jet Engine” and“Turbine Engine”), a patent infringement analysis 1607, and severalpatents 1609 a-h. In this example, associations between two documentsare illustrated by links 1613. A document may be linked one way or bothways. A link may be to/from the document generally, or a specificlocation in the document. Each link may include an annotation 1611.Preferably, the annotation includes any user comments, user-suppliedtext, other user-supplied digital data, user-defined attributes (e.g.,company's patent, competitor's patent, project name), history, etc. Inthe present example, a user could select the “Power Projects”, view thelinks and embedded annotations regarding the “Jet Engine” and “TurbineEngine” documents. The user could select one or more of the links tolinked other intellectual property documents. The process continuesthroughout the chain of linked documents. The user optionally may selectyet another intellectual property document and create a link withoptional annotation. An intellectual property document may bemultiply-linked, and may link to itself if desired.

FIG. 17 is a linked diagram illustrating another example of annotatedintellectual property documents and data, according to one or moreembodiments of the present invention. The subject of this example is alicense 1701 including multiple terms 1713. The license generally islinked both ways to a related product document 1715. The licenseincludes annotations with internal notes 1705, 1707 on two terms; anannotation of a term with multiple versions of proposed changes to alicense term 1709; an annotation relating to two terms with a digitizedvoice recording of a negotiation 1711; and a link both ways to a relatedpatent, trademark or other intellectual property document 1703, withannotations 1611.

FIGS. 18 A-B is an example flow chart illustrating an interaction withthe user to obtain annotations and links for an intellectual propertydocument, in accordance with one or more embodiments of the presentinvention. At step 1801, the document to be marked-up is provided to theuser, for example via a display. The document may have been previouslyobtained, for example via a search, browse, or other retrievalcomponent, tool or function. At step 1802, the system interacts with theuser to determine a portion of the document to be marked-up. Thedocument may have been previously divided into sections and/orsubsections, for example, that are candidates for marking up.Alternatively, the user may, e.g., perform a click-and-select functionto selected a portion. At step 1804, the system optionally indicates thedetermined portion, for example, by highlighting the portion, via apop-up-window, via special color, etc. At step 1806, the systeminteracts with the user to obtain a mark-up for this portion of thedocument. For example, the system may provided a pull-down menu, apop-up window, a particular font, etc. The permissible contents ofmark-up to be applied may be customized by an administrative user, maybe free-form, and/or may have a check-list of pre-defined elements, etc.According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, the usermay select and/or enter the mark-up information. At step 1808, thesystem determines whether the mark-up is to include one or morereferences to an intellectual property document. If so, then at step1810, the system provides that the user can locate and/or link from thepresent document to the intellectual property document. In the presentexample, the system provides a search and/or browse tool to locate thedocument. At step 1814, the system interacts with the user to indicate aselected portion of the document to be linked to. The selected portionmay be some or all of the current document, and/or another document. Atstep 1818, the system saves a reference, e.g., a link, pointer,identifier, for the other document and any selected portion, togetherwith the associated mark-up. At step 1812, the system saves the mark-up,together with any optional reference to another document and/or theindicated portion thereof, into, for example, temporary storage. Atblock 1816, the system checks whether there are any further mark-ups tobe applied to the current document, and if so, loops back to step 1802.

If there are no further mark-ups and if the document and mark-ups are tobe saved, then at block 1820, the system determines whether themarked-up document was edited and/or was editable. If so, the documentis stored at step 1822. At step 1824, the system determines whetherthere is one or more saved mark-ups to be applied to the document. Ifnot, then the system exits. If there are mark-ups, then at step 1826,the system determines whether the mark-ups are stored separately fromthe document. If not, then at step 1828 the system stores the savedmark-ups together with the document. Otherwise, at step 1830, the systemstores the saved mark-ups separately from the document, and at step 1832stores data representative of the mark-up locations within the document.The function then exits processing.

FIG. 19 is a flow chart illustrating one example of traversing fromintellectual property document to intellectual property document, vialinks associated with the document and/or sections thereof, optionallyhaving annotations. At step 1901, the system obtains the document, anddisplays the document together with annotations (or indicationsthereof). At step 1903, the system loops for the user to select anannotation and/or section of the document associated with a link. Atstep 1905, the system displays the annotation information, if any. Atstep 1907, the system determines whether the annotation (or selectedsection) includes or is associated with one or more links. If not, thesystem loops back to step 1903. If there is at least one link associatedwith the annotation (or selected section), step 1907, then the systemloops at step 1909 until the user selects a link. When the user selectsa link, then at step 1911, the system determines the location of thelinked document (or section thereof) via reference information, forexample, stored or associated with the annotation, obtains the linkeddocument (or section thereof), and displays the just-obtained document,optionally together with any annotation indications. The system thenloops back to step 1903, enabling the user thereby to continue totraverse the related linked documents.

Reference is now made to FIG. 20, illustrating an example architecturefor use in connection with one or more embodiments of the presentinvention. In the present example, a computer 2001 hosts one or moreannotations components 2003 and one or more linkages components 2005.The annotations component has one or more of the following: a componentto apply an annotation 2013 to a document; a component to edit anannotation 2015; and a component for document and/or section selection2017. The apply annotation component 2013 interacts with the user tocreate an annotation, e.g., using menus, free form text, cut-and-pasteof text, web pages and/or hyper links; and to apply that annotation tothe document (or to the selected section of the document). Theannotation may be applied, e.g., by inserting the annotation into thedocument, by saving the annotation separately in an annotations database2011 and inserting a reference to the annotation into the document,and/or by saving metadata associating the reference and the document (orselected section thereof), etc. The edit annotation component 2015interacts with the user to edit an existing annotation, e.g., usingmenus, free form text, cut-and-pate, etc., and optionally to save theedited annotation. The edited annotation may be saved, e.g., by savingthe edited annotation with the document, by saving the edited annotationseparately and optionally updating a reference to the annotation intothe document, and/or by updating metadata associating the reference andthe document (or selected section thereof), etc. The document and/orsection selection component 2017 interacts with the user to determine aportion, portions or the entirety of the document to be associated withthe annotation.

The linkages component(s) 2005 include one or more of: a component toestablish, indicate and/or remove one or more links 2019, a component toallow the user to traverse one or more links 2021, and a component fordocument and/or section selection. The document and/or section selectioncomponent 2023 interacts with the user to determine a portion, portionsor the entirety of one or more documents to be associated with a link. Alink may be between one or more documents or sections thereof. Adocument may be linked back to itself or a section therein. Thecomponent to establish, indicate and/or remove a link 2019 interactswith the user to determine the document and/or section to link from, andthe document and/or section to link to. The link may be established orindicated, e.g., by inserting a link (e.g., reference, pointer, etc.)into the document, by saving the links separately in a links database2009 and inserting a reference to the link into the document, and/or bysaving metadata associating the link and the document (or selectedsection thereof), etc. Optionally, links and annotations are stored inassociation. Optionally, links are stored within the associatedannotations, or vice versa. The component to traverse links 2021determines one or more links, if any, associated with a selecteddocument and/or selected portions thereof, optionally one or moreannotations associated therewith, and optionally the document title ordescription at the node of the link. Further, the links component 2021interacts with the user to determine which link to traverse; to obtainthe link (pointer, reference, etc.) to the linked document; and toretrieve the linked document and provide to the user. With the retrieveddocument, the user may traverse further links therefrom. According toone or more embodiments of the present invention, one or more users 2027are local communicating with the computer 2001, and/or are connectedover a network, e.g., the Internet 1005. In the illustrated example, thedocuments database 2007, links database 2009, and annotations database2011 are local to the computer 2001; a further documents database 2025is accessed via the Internet 1005.

Reference is now made to FIGS. 24 to 26, illustrating one or moreaspects of the present invention. Types of attributes assigned tointellectual property documents, and/or the attributes themselves, maybe used in connection with searching, accessing, analyzing, and/orreporting, for example. In at least some instances, attributes andattribute types are different from pre-existing field contents or fields(e.g., inventor, title, serial number, etc.) in the intellectualproperty document.

Attributes are conveniently assigned when there is an intake of one ormore intellectual property documents to the intellectual propertydocuments database. This may occur at various points in time, forexample, when the intellectual property document is initially available(e.g., upon initial conception, creation or upon filing), and/or firstdesignated for inclusion, and/or when adding legacy intellectualproperty documents. An intellectual property document that already hasattributes assigned, may be subjected to further assignment, deletion,and/or revision of attributes.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention,attributes associated with an intellectual property document are storedapart from the intellectual property document. For example, attributesmay be stored as metadata. Optionally, attributes are stored inconjunction with other annotations associated with the intellectualproperty documents. A unique identifier is used to locate the relatedmetadata. A serial number, issue number, other unique identifier, orportion thereof, optionally in combination with, e.g., a country code orintellectual property type indicator, may be used to provide a uniqueidentifier.

A type of attribute may reflect that the intellectual property documentsare product-centric and/or services-centric. For many companies orconcerns, everything they sell is tied to a product or a service. Othertraits or information may be used as an attribute type. Once a user isable to group intellectual property documents, and label theintellectual property documents as being related to one or moreattributes and attribute types, then the attributes and attribute typesmay be used for various applications, e.g., searching, generatingreports, etc. Hence, attribute types may include one or more of: aproduct, a service, an actor (a person or entity who performed anaction), a user, the current owner (as provided by the user, e.g., notderived by the system from inherent fields or other data), an indicationthat the patent is the company's or a competitor's, a project name,and/or an indication of level of conformance.

Referring once more to the example of product/services as a type ofattribute, assume that a user has determined one or more particularproducts or services to be associated as an attribute with multipleintellectual property documents. A user can identify the patent(s)and/or other intellectual property associated with a particular productor service by providing information identifying the product or service.Conversely, by identifying a particular patent, for example, a user maydetermine the products that are relevant to the patent.

Consider for example, that a user wishes to analyze a patent from theperspective that the user owns the patent. In this example, the userspecifies the patent, and determines that the patent relates to aparticular component. The user may then request a report to see allpatents associated with the particular component. Assume further thatthe attribute type of component is a sub-type of the product attributetype. Hence, the particular component relates to a particular product.The user may then request a report to see all patents associated withthe particular product.

By providing one or more attributes and/or attribute types by, e.g.,pull-down menu, tree structure, or check-list, a user may easilydetermine the attribute or attribute type that is desired. For a userwith a product- or service-oriented viewpoint, the attribute types mayrelate to products and/or services. The attributes and/or attributetypes may be pre-defined by the system, and/or may be user-customized,e.g., by an administrative user.

An intellectual property document may be associated with one or moreattribute types, and an attribute type associated therewith may beassigned one or more attributes. For example, a patent for a chemicaldye may have a product type of “clothing, food, and hair care.” A queryfor intellectual property documents related to the product “clothing”would return results including the patent for the chemical dye.

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, a companyor user may customize the attributes and/or attribute types. Accordingto one or more embodiments of the present invention, one or moreattributes and/or attribute types may be locked so as to be unchangeableexcept by an appropriately authorized user. An attribute optionallypermits addition of free-form information by the user, e.g., text, URLto a file, a reference to another intellectual property document, animage file, a video file, an audio file, or a file made using anothercomputer software application.

Optionally, one or more attributes to be associated with a particularintellectual property document may be determined through, e.g., ascanned or typed SKU, model number and/or a manufacturer batch number.

Optionally, information regarding attributes and attribute types can beexported or otherwise provided for use in connection with another entitythat has a separate collection of intellectual property documents.Hence, according to one or more embodiments of the present invention, acompany may send its attribute data to an outside IP boutique for use inconnection with the IP boutique's intellectual property documents.

A further optional feature provides for preliminarily determining agrouping of intellectual property documents to be associated withattributes. A user selects a grouping of intellectual property documentsto constitute a project. The documents to be included in the groupingmay be specified in any appropriate manner, e.g., as search results,specified by registration number, a patent family search, etc.

The project can be subdivided to provide another project grouping. Theintellectual property documents within the project (whether the originalor the sub-project) can then be worked on. This is useful, for example,where large number of intellectual property documents need to haveattributes assigned. For example, a user could request all patents ownedby the General Electric Company (GE), and subdivide those into multipleprojects for further action by other users in associating appropriateattributes therewith.

Optionally, attributes may be assigned to one or more intellectualproperty documents within a project grouping, individually and/or as agroup.

As a further option, an intellectual property document may be includedin more than one project.

Optionally, an ownership request performs multiple database checks tomore accurately determine ownership. With respect to patents, forexample, a patent ownership search would locate patents issued to GE (aslisted in the patent data), plus patents currently assigned in to GE (aslisted in assignment data), minus patents assigned away from GE (aslisted in assignment data).

Optionally, the grouping takes into account intellectual property thathas lapsed, e.g., expired, canceled, for failure to pay maintenance orannuity fees. For example, the user can specify that the grouping shouldomit, include, and/or be limited to lapsed intellectual property.

Optionally, the intellectual property documents within the project aresorted to provide for coherent presentation to a user. Documents may beorganized in any appropriate manner, for example, by intellectualproperty type (e.g., patent, trademark, etc), by fields within thedocuments (e.g., class/subclass, XML tags) and/or by previously assignedattributes. For example, the project grouping of all patents owned by GEcould be sorted by class, and then subdivided (e.g., along class lines)into further projects. The sorting and/or further subdivision ofintellectual property documents within a project may be manual,automatic, or semi-manual.

A project grouping of intellectual property documents may be providedfor further action by a user. Optionally, a user can check in and checkout from projects. Optionally, one or more intellectual propertydocuments in a project may be re-assigned to a different project.

One or more embodiments of the present invention provide for utilizingthe attributes as a filter. For example, the user could filter theintellectual property documents and view all documents that have aspecified attribute or attribute(s). Filtration utilizing attributescould be used, for example, with searching, retrieving, reporting and/orviewing. Optionally, filtration could utilize one or a combination of:(i) attribute content; (ii) type of attribute; (iii) sub-types ofattribute types; (iv) content of a field in the intellectual propertydocument; (v) type of a field in the intellectual property document;and/or (vi) information derived from one or more of the foregoing, e.g.,current owner of record. Optionally, where attributes are stored asmetadata, the metadata can be searched to determine the intellectualproperty document(s) having specified attributes.

The determination of intellectual property documents included in areport generated using attributes and/or attribute types as a filter canbe very flexible. One or more of the attributes and/or attribute typesassociated with the subjects of a report may be included as or the basisfor information in the report. For example, a report could count thenumber of trademarks owned by a company for each of several products orservice lines.

Reference is now made to FIGS. 24-26, providing examples of assigningattributes to intellectual property documents, grouping documents into aproject, and using attributes for filtering. FIG. 24 is an exampleflowchart for determining attributes, step 2401, to be associated with,for example, intellectual property documents or files. At step 2403, oneor more intellectual property documents are selected to be assigned anattribute. At step 2405, the system interacts with the user (orautomatically) to select an attribute type. At step 2407, the systeminteracts with the user to select one or more attributes (based on theattribute type) to be assigned to the document. At step 2409, the systemassociates the attribute type and the attribute with the document. Atstep 2411, the system determines whether it is desired to assign anotherattribute for this same attribute type to this document, and if so,loops back to step 2407. At step 2413, the system determines whether anattribute for another attribute type is to be assigned to the currentdocument, and if so, loops back to step 2405. At step 2415, the systemdetermines whether there is another document to which to assignattributes. If so, at step 2417, the system gets the next intellectualproperty document to be assigned an attribute, and loops back to step2403. If the system is done assigning attributes to documents, at step2419, the system stores the attribute type(s) and the attribute(s) thatwere associated with the document. At step 2421, processing for thisflow ends.

In accordance with one or more embodiments of the present invention, theattributes may be provided in a hierarchy structure with attributes,sub-attributes, sub-sub-attributes and so forth to create a treestructure. An intellectual property document or file may be associatedor tagged with anyone or more of these attributes and sub- orsub-sub-attributes. At the time of association or tagging, theintellectual property document or file is simultaneously orautomatically associated or tagged with all of the attributes that areat a level higher than the particular attribute or attributes with whichthe intellectual property document or file is associated or tagged. Inother words, the intellectual property document or file adopts orinherits the tag or associated profile of the attribute or attributeswith which it is associated or tagged. In this manner, all of theattributes that otherwise would have been selected in a step-by-stepmanner may be assigned simultaneously and automatically by tagging theintellectual property document or file with not only the selectedattribute(s), but all of the other attributes that are at a level higherthan the selected attributes.

Optionally, intellectual property documents to be assigned attributesare grouped into one or more projects together prior to the assigningprocess. The assigning process can then intake the intellectual propertydocuments in a particular project. Grouping of large amounts ofintellectual property documents can be assisted by providing an abilityto sort and/or subdivide. It is understood that the grouping ofintellectual property documents or files is also effected by tagging.

FIG. 25 is an example flowchart for grouping intellectual propertydocuments into a project, step 2501. At step 2503, a grouping of IPdocuments to be ingested is selected, for example, by utilizing searchresults or documents in a workspace. At step 2505, the system interactswith the user to determine whether the grouping needs to be sorted, andif so, at step 2507, the system sorts the grouping of documents. At step2509, the system interacts with the user to determine whether thegrouping needs to be divided, and if so, at step 2511, the systemdetermines documents to be in the sub-groupings, for example, byselecting particular documents or placing a portion of documents into afolder. At step 2513, the system determines whether the sub-groupingitself needs to be sorted and/or further subdivided. If the sub-groupingneeds further sorting or subdivision, the system loops back to step2505. Sub-grouping can be re-iterated. If there is no further grouping,sorting, and/or dividing, then processing for this flow ends at step2515. It is to be understood that each grouping may also effected bytagging.

Once attributes are assigned to intellectual property documents, theattributes can be used to filter, e.g., for searching and/or reporting.FIG. 26 is an example flow chart for using attributes to filter throughintellectual property documents, 2601. At step 2603, the systeminteracts with the user to determine the attribute(s) to be used as afilter. At step 2605, the system searches the meta-data for thespecified attributes, where the meta data has the document identifier(or other reference to the document). At step 2607, the systemdetermines whether the search of the meta data is done, and if not,loops back to step 2605. At step 2609, the system displays informationrepresentative of the search results, e.g., document identifiers (serialnumbers, etc.). Optionally, the system obtains further informationconcerning the document (e.g., title, mark, owner). Therefore, at step2611, the system determines whether it should retrieve data for theintellectual property document. If so, at step 2613, the systemretrieves the intellectual property document data for the searchresults. At step 2615, processing for this flow ends.

The following provides an example use of one or more embodiments of thepresent invention. Initially, ABC Corp. decides to intake theintellectual property portfolio of a company it acquired, XYZ Corp. Inthis example, the XYZ Corp. intellectual property assets have not yetbeen assigned attributes. The ABC Corp. user performs a search for allpatents and trademarks with XYZ Corp. as the current owner of record.This provides a list (for example) of 2,000 patents and 200 trademarks.The user sorts the list, first by type of intellectual property; theuser then sorts the patents by class/sub-class, and the trademarks byInternational Class. The user then selects, drags and drops, intovarious projects, the sorted intellectual property. (The projects can beworked on by other users, and provide a convenient way to subdividelarge numbers of documents.) By working through documents within aproject, a user then may assign attributes to the intellectual propertytherein. For example, consider that one project has patents for copiertechnology. The user selects one or more patents in the project andchooses to assign attributes. The system prompts the user to provide anattribute type, e.g., product. Attribute types may be customized toinclude, in this example, Company, Division and Technology Type.Acceptable attributes for the selected attribute type(s) are displayedto the user; optionally, the user may type in text. In our example, theuser selects:

Attribute Type Attribute Company ABC Corp. Division Electrical DivisionTechnology type copier technology Product Model 123

This process is eventually performed for all of the documents in theproject. Other searches and/or sorting can be performed if desired tobetter identify documents to be grouped into projects. Further, theintake can be performed on a periodic basis, for example when patentsand registrations issue. Portions of the process may be automated ifpreferred. Optionally, a selection of a particular product (e.g., modelnumber, component name) as a product type will cause the higher-levelattribute types to inherit the appropriate attributes. For example, aselection of “Copier Technology” causes the “company” and “division”attribute types to inherit the attributes “ABC Corp.” and “ElectricalDivision”, respectively. Optionally, an intellectual document may havemultiple attributes for an attribute type.

Continuing with the same example, a user later wants to retrieve a listof trademarks for a particular product. A search can be performed forsuch trademarks by, e.g., the attribute type “product” and the attributeof a specified model number; and the search will return, as results, thetrademarks that were assigned to the specified model number. Thissearch, filtered by an attribute, optionally may be combined withsearching based on pre-existing or inherent document field contents,such as “country,” to yield, e.g., a list of trademarks on a particularproduct sorted alphabetically and by country. As another example on thepatent side, a search for a particular product would yield a list ofpatents (if any) relevant to the product.

Similarly, an intake can be performed on copyrights. Optionally, thecopyright information is linked to an electronic copy of the copyrightdocument. The user can retrieve a list of ingested copyrights, e.g., fora particular product. Documents and/or electronic representations ofinformation relating to other intellectual property are optionallyincluded in the system. For example, trade secret-related informationmay be reflected in documents specifying treatment of building access,etc.; technical data rights may be reflected in licenses; contracts maybe reflected in licenses, non-disclosure agreements, memoranda ofunderstanding, joint development agreements, joint venture agreements,etc.

Optionally, one or more embodiments of the present invention include aninvention disclosure module, with optional full life cycle tracking. Theoptionally invention disclosure module automatically tags an “invention”directed to a particular product, beginning e.g., with the inventiondisclosure. Upon further creation of additional documents, e.g., draftpatent application, white paper, patent, licenses, etc. the user isprompted to indicate the invention to which they pertain. A search canthen be performed that results in a list of documents pertaining to aparticular invention. Preferably, the documents are sorted inchronological order to reflect progress during the invention life cycle.An “invention” optionally includes multiple applications.

The use of the optional multiple-layer attributes permits a user tosearch, retrieve, or otherwise access one or more intellectual propertydocuments via one or more attributes within the multiple layers.Similarly, by accessing the document(s), the user can easily determineeach attribute within the multiple layers. For example, the useraccessing a user interface patent assigned the attribute “Model 123” forthe attribute type “Product” can determine the remaining attributes,e.g., “copier technology, “Electrical Division”, and “ABC Corp.”According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, anintellectual property document may be assigned to one or more sets ofattributes. For example, the just-mentioned user interface patent mayoptionally be assigned an additional attribute “Model 456” whichinherits the attributes “telephone technology”, “CommunicationsDivision” and “ABC Corp.” for the respective attribute types “Technologytype,” “Division,” and “Company.” A list of intellectual propertycorresponding to one or more specified attributes may be generated.

FIG. 21 is an illustration of a computer 58 used for implementing thecomputer processing in accordance with a computer-implemented embodimentof the present invention. The procedures described above may bepresented in terms of program procedures executed on, for example, acomputer or network of computers.

Viewed externally in FIG. 21, computer 48 has a central processing unit(CPU) 68 having disk drives 69, 70. Disk drives 69, 70 are merelysymbolic of a number of disk drives that might be accommodated bycomputer 58. Typically, these might be one or more of the following: afloppy disk drive 69, a hard disk drive (not shown), and a CD ROM ordigital video disk, as indicated by the slot at 70. The number and typeof drives varies, typically with different computer configurations. Diskdrives 69, 70 are, in fact, options, and for space considerations, maybe omitted from the computer system used in conjunction with theprocesses described herein.

Computer 58 also has a display 71 upon which information may bedisplayed. The display is optional for the computer used in conjunctionwith the system described herein. A keyboard 72 and/or a pointing device73, such as a mouse 73, may be provided as input devices to interfacewith central processing unit 68. To increase input efficiency, keyboard72 may be supplemented or replaced with a scanner, card reader, or otherdata input device. The pointing device 73 may be a mouse, touch padcontrol device, track ball device, or any other type of pointing device.

Alternatively, referring to FIG. 23, computer 58 may also include a CDROM reader 95 and CD recorder 96, which are interconnected by a bus 97along with other peripheral devices 98 supported by the bus structureand protocol. Bus 97 serves as the main information highwayinterconnecting other components of the computer. It is connected via aninterface 99 to the computer 58.

FIG. 22 illustrates a block diagram of the internal hardware of thecomputer of FIG. 21. CPU 75 is the central processing unit of thesystem, performing calculations and logic operations required to executea program. Read only memory (ROM) 76 and random access memory (RAM) 77constitute the main memory of the computer.

Disk controller 78 interfaces one or more disk drives to the system bus74. These disk drives may be floppy disk drives such as 79, or CD ROM orDVD (digital video/versatile disk) drives, as at 80, or internal orexternal hard drives 81. As previously indicated these various diskdrives and disk controllers are optional devices.

A display interface 82 permits information from bus 74 to be displayedon the display 83. Again, as indicated, the display 83 is an optionalaccessory for a central or remote computer in the communication network,as are infrared receiver 88 and transmitter 89. Communication withexternal devices occurs using communications port 84.

In addition to the standard components of the computer, the computer mayalso include an interface 85, which allows for data input through thekeyboard 86 or pointing device, such as a mouse 87.

Conventional processing system architecture is more fully discussed inComputer Organization and Architecture, by William Stallings, MacMillanPublishing Co. (3d ed. 1993). Conventional processing system networkdesign is more fully discussed in Data Network Design, by Darren L.Spohn, McGraw-Hill, Inc. (1993). Conventional data communications ismore fully discussed in Data Communications Principles, by R. D. Gitlin,J. F. Hayes, and S. B. Weinstain, Plenum Press (1992), and in The IrwinHandbook of Telecommunications, by James Harry Green, Irwin ProfessionalPublishing (2d ed. 1992). Each of the foregoing publications isincorporated herein by reference.

The foregoing detailed description includes many specific details. Theinclusion of such detail is for the purpose of illustration only andshould not be understood to limit the invention. In addition, featuresin one embodiment may be combined with features in other embodiments ofthe invention. Various changes may be made without departing from thescope of the invention as defined in the following claims.

As one example, the information system may include a general purposecomputer, or a specially programmed special purpose computer. It may beimplemented as a distributed computer system rather than a singlecomputer. Similarly, a communications link may be World Wide Web, amodem over a POTS line, and/or any other method of communicating betweencomputers and/or users. Moreover, the processing could be controlled bya software program on one or more computer system or processors, orcould even be partially or wholly implemented in hardware.

This invention is not limited to particular types of intellectualproperty. It is intended for use with any type of intellectual property,e.g., patents, trademarks, trade secrets, designs, sui generisprotection, copyrights, licenses, litigations, and/or other rights.Further, various aspects of one or more embodiments of the presentinvention are useful with documents including those not related tointellectual property.

Further, the invention is not limited to particular protocols forcommunication. Any appropriate communication protocol may be used.

The report may be developed in connection with HTML display format.Although HTML is the preferred display format, it is possible to utilizealternative display formats for displaying a report and obtaining userinstructions. The invention has been discussed in connection withparticular examples. However, the principles apply equally to otherexamples and/or realizations. Naturally, the relevant data may differ,as appropriate.

Further, this invention has been discussed in certain examples as if itis made available by a provider to a single customer with a single site.The invention may be used by numerous customers, if preferred. Also, theinvention may be utilized by customers with multiple sites and/or agentsand/or licensee-type arrangements.

This invention has been described in connection with example dataformats, for example XML and USPTO defined XML. However, the inventionmay be used in connection with other data formats, structured and/orunstructured, unitary and/or distributed.

The system used in connection with the invention may rely on theintegration of various components including, as appropriate and/or ifdesired, hardware and software servers, applications software, databaseengines, server area networks, firewall and SSL security, productionback-up systems, and/or applications interface software. Theconfiguration may be, preferably, network-based and optionally utilizesthe Internet as an exemplary primary interface with the customer forinformation delivery.

The system may store collected information in a database. An appropriatedatabase may be on a standard server, for example, a small Sun Sparc orother remote location. The database is optionally an MSQL, MYSQL, minisequel server MiniSQL, or Oracle. Information is stored in the database,and optionally stored and backed up by a back-up server, periodically oraperiodically, for example, every night along with all other data in theservers that are behind the corporate firewall into a back-up storagefacility. Back-up storage facility comprises, for example, one or moretape silos that are also used to back up the entire network every night.Data security and segregation of the various customers' data isadvantageously maintained. The information, for example, will eventuallyget stored, for example, on a platform that may, for example beUNIX-based.

The various databases may be in, for example, a UNIX format, but otherstandard data formats may also be used. Windows NT, for example, isused, but other standard operating systems may also be used. Optionally,the various databases include a conversion system capable of receivingdata in various standard formats.

From the user's perspective, according to some embodiments the user mayaccess the public Internet or other suitable network and look at itsspecific information at any time from any location as long as it hasInternet or other suitable access. For example, the user opens itsstandard web browser, goes to the address that is specified for its loaddata, and optionally fills out a user ID to log on, and a password toidentify it as the specific user or the specific customer of thatparticular information.

Optionally, security of the networks is as tight as possible such thatthe data, not only customer data, but any information that is beyond thefirewall is always protected against any kind of potential intrusion.The user, and, indeed, multiple users concurrently can look at the sameinformation. Advantageously, having this system on the Internet enablesusers at various locations throughout the country or the world, to visitthe same site at the same time and enter into a discussion or talk groupas to what they are seeing, what it means, and maybe what they can dowith that information.

1. A method for managing a plurality of attributes in association with a plurality of electronic documents and a plurality of attribute types, implemented by a computer system, said method comprising at least one of sequential, non-sequential and sequence-independent steps in the computer system of: (A) providing, in the computer system, a first data storage having a group of a plurality of documents including at least one document; (B) accepting, from an input device, a user's selection of a plurality of attributes to be associated with a single pre-determined attribute type for the at least one document, the attribute type having parent and child attribute types, the selected attributes being predetermined and having different parent attributes, attribute types being predetermined and ordered in a predetermined tree-structure hierarchy; and (C) responsive to the selection of the attributes, automatically tagging, in the first data storage, the documents in the group including the at least one document, with the selected attributes, and with all attributes of all ancestors but not descendants or siblings according to the hierarchy of the selected attributes; and storing, in a second data storage, respective references in association with the selected attributes and the ancestor attributes, for later retrieval of individual documents in the group by searching the ancestor attributes instead of the selected attributes, the respective references uniquely indicating respective individual documents in the first data storage, wherein the at least one document is a data record including a plurality of fields, wherein the attribute and the attribute type are different from the fields in the document and contents of the fields.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the group of documents includes selecting the documents included in the group of documents responsive to a user.
 3. The method of claim 2, further comprising the step of organizing the group of documents, wherein the documents are sorted for visual presentation by at least one field therein, wherein the at least one field is different from the attribute and attribute type associated therewith.
 4. The method of claim 2, wherein the group of documents omits a lapsed document.
 5. The method of claim 2, further comprising the step of assigning at least one of the documents to at least one other group.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one document is at least one of: XML format, binary format, image data, audio data, an interpretive file, and video data.
 7. The method of claim 1, further comprising searching the second data storage for documents based on criteria including at least one of the attributes and a corresponding attribute type, and using the respective references in the second data storage to locate the documents in the first data storage.
 8. The method of claim 7, further comprising retrieving the located documents from the first data storage based on the respective references.
 9. The method of claim 8, further comprising displaying information characterizing the documents.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the attributes is associated with at least one user, the at least one document being accessible by a plurality of users including the at least one user, further comprising limiting access to the at least one attribute to the at least one user associated therewith.
 11. The method of claim 1, wherein the attributes further include at least one of: a reference to a URL, a reference to an other file, and user-provided text.
 12. The method of claim 1, wherein the documents include: an invention disclosure document, a patent document, a trademark document, a copyright document, a product description document, a contract document, a license document, a sui generis protection document, a design registration document, a trade secret document, and an opinion document.
 13. The method of claim 1, further comprising preliminarily determining, for the attribute types, the plurality of attributes.
 14. The method of claim 1, wherein the attributes are selected from a plurality of attribute types representative of at least one of: a product and a service.
 15. The method of claim 14, wherein the plurality of attribute types further includes at least one of: an actor, a user entity, a current owner, and a project.
 16. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of exporting the tree structure hierarchy including the attributes and the attribute types.
 17. The method of claim 1, further comprising utilizing the attributes as criteria for at least one of searching, retrieving, reporting, and viewing the at least one document.
 18. The method of claim 17, wherein the attributes are utilized in combination with: (i) at least one of the attribute types, (ii) at least one sub-type of the at least one attribute type, (iii) a content of at least one field in the at least one document; (iv) a type of at least one field in the at least one document; and (v) information derived from the at least one field in the at least one document.
 19. The method of claim 1, wherein the respective references correspond to the serial numbers of the respective documents.
 20. A method for managing a plurality of attributes in association with a plurality of electronic documents and a plurality of attribute types, implemented by a computer system, said method comprising the at least one of sequential, non-sequential and sequence-independent steps in the computer system of: (A) providing, in the computer system, a first data storage having a group of a plurality of documents including at least one document; (B) accepting, from an input device, a user's selection of a plurality of attributes to be associated with a single pre-determined attribute type for the at least one document, the attribute type having parent and child attribute types, the selected attributes being predetermined and having different parent attributes, attribute types being predetermined and ordered in a predetermined tree-structure hierarchy; (C) responsive to the selection of the attributes, automatically tagging, in the first data storage, the documents in the group including the at least one document, with the selected attributes, and with all attributes of all ancestors but not descendants or siblings according to the hierarchy of the selected attributes; and storing, in a second data storage, respective references in association with the selected attributes and the ancestor attributes, for later retrieval of individual documents in the group by searching the ancestor attributes instead of the selected attributes, the respective references uniquely indicating respective individual documents in the first data storage; and (D) wherein the at least one document and the at least one other document are representative of at least one of: an invention disclosure document, a patent document, a trademark document, a copyright document, a product description document, a contract document, a license document, a sui generis protection document, a design registration document, a trade secret document, and an opinion document, wherein a document is a data record including a plurality of fields, wherein the attribute and the attribute type is different from the fields in the document and contents of the fields.
 21. The method of claim 20, wherein providing the group of documents includes selecting the documents included in the group of documents responsive to a user.
 22. The method of claim 20, further comprising searching the second data storage for documents based on criteria including at least one of the attributes and a corresponding attribute type, and using the respective references in the second data storage to locate the documents in the first data storage.
 23. The method of claim 20, wherein the attributes are selected from a plurality of attribute types representative of at least one of: a product and a service.
 24. The method of claim 20, further comprising utilizing the attributes as criteria for at least one of searching, retrieving, reporting, and viewing the at least one document.
 25. The method of claim 24, wherein the attributes are utilized in combination with: (i) the attribute types, (ii) at least one sub-type of the at least one attribute type, (iii) a content of at least one field in the at least one document; (iv) a type of at least one field in the at least one document; and (v) information derived from the at least one field in the at least one document.
 26. The method of claim 20, wherein the respective references correspond to the serial numbers of the respective documents.
 27. A computer program product, for use in managing a plurality of attributes in association with a plurality of electronic documents and a plurality of attribute types, stored in connection with at least one computer system, said computer program product comprising: (A) at least one computer readable medium, readable by the at least one computer system; (B) instructions, provided on the at least one computer readable medium, for providing a first data storage having a group of a plurality of documents including at least one document; (C) instructions, provided on the at least one computer readable medium, for accepting, from an input device, a user's selection of a plurality of attributes to be associated with a single pre-determined attribute type for the at least one document, the attribute type having parent and child attribute types, the selected attributes being predetermined and having different parent attributes, attribute types being predetermined and ordered in a predetermined tree-structure hierarchy; and (D) instructions, provided on the at least one computer readable medium, for automatically tagging, responsive to the selection of the attributes, in the first data storage, the documents in the group including the at least one document, with the selected attributes, and with all attributes of all ancestors but not descendants or siblings according to the hierarchy of the selected attributes; and storing, in a second data storage, respective references in association with the selected attributes and the ancestor attributes, for later retrieval of individual documents in the group by searching the ancestor attributes instead of the selected attributes, the respective references uniquely indicating respective individual documents in the first data storage; (E) wherein the at least one document and the at least one other document are representative of at least one of: an invention disclosure document, a patent document, a trademark document, a copyright document, a product description document, a contract document, a license document, a sui generis protection document, a design registration document, a trade secret document, and an opinion document, wherein a document is a data record including a plurality of fields, wherein the attribute and the attribute type is different from the fields in the document and contents of the fields.
 28. The computer program product of claim 27, wherein providing the group of documents includes selecting the documents included in the group of documents responsive to a user, wherein the group of documents omits a lapsed document.
 29. The computer program product of claim 27, further comprising instructions, provided on the at least one computer readable medium, for searching the second data storage for documents based on criteria including at least one of the attributes and a corresponding attribute type, using the respective references in the second data storage to locate the documents in the first data storage.
 30. The computer program product of claim 27, wherein the attributes are selected from a plurality of attribute types representative of at least one of: a product and a service.
 31. The computer program product of claim 27, further comprising instructions, provided on the at least one computer readable medium, for utilizing the attributes as criteria for at least one of searching, retrieving, reporting, and viewing the at least one document.
 32. The computer program product of claim 31, wherein the attributes are utilized in combination with: (i) at least one of the attribute types, (ii) at least one sub-type of the at least one attribute type, (iii) a content of at least one field in the at least one document; (iv) a type of at least one field in the at least one document; and (v) information derived from the at least one field in the at least one document.
 33. The computer program product of claim 27, wherein the respective references correspond to the serial numbers of the respective documents.
 34. A system, implemented on at least one computer, for managing a plurality of attributes in association with a plurality of electronic documents and a plurality of attribute types, said system comprising: (A) means, in the at least one computer, for providing a first data storage having a group of a plurality of documents including at least one document; (B) means, in the at least one computer, for accepting, from an input device, a user's selection of a plurality of attributes to be associated with a single pre-determined attribute type for the at least one document, the attribute type having parent and child attribute types, the selected attributes being predetermined and having different parent attributes, attribute types being predetermined and ordered in a predetermined tree-structure hierarchy; and (C) means, in the at least one computer, responsive to the selection of the attributes, for automatically tagging, in the first data storage, the documents in the group including the at least one document, with the selected attributes, and with all attributes of all ancestors but not descendants or siblings according to the hierarchy of the selected attributes; and storing, in a second data storage, respective references in association with the selected attributes and the ancestor attributes, for later retrieval of individual documents in the group by searching the ancestor attributes instead of the selected attributes, the respective references uniquely indicating respective individual documents in the first data storage; (D) wherein the at least one document and the at least one other document are representative of at least one of: an invention disclosure document, a patent document, a trademark document, a copyright document, a product description document, a contract document, a license document, a sui generis protection document, a design registration document, a trade secret document, and an opinion document, wherein a document is a data record including a plurality of fields, wherein the attribute and the attribute type are different from the fields in the document and contents of the fields.
 35. The system of claim 34, wherein the means for providing the group of documents includes selecting the documents included in the group of documents responsive to a user.
 36. The system of claim 34, further comprising means, in the at least one computer, for searching the second data storage for documents based on criteria including at least one of the attributes and a corresponding attribute type, and using the respective references in the second data storage to locate the documents in the first data storage.
 37. The system of claim 34, wherein the attributes are selected from a plurality of attribute types representative of at least one of: a product and a service.
 38. The system of claim 34, further comprising utilizing the attributes as criteria for at least one of searching, retrieving, reporting, and viewing the at least one document.
 39. The system of claim 38, wherein the attributes are utilized in combination with: (i) the attribute types, (ii) at least one sub-type of the at least one attribute type, (iii) a content of at least one field in the at least one document; (iv) a type of at least one field in the at least one document; and (v) information derived from the at least one field in the at least one document.
 40. The system of claim 34, wherein the respective references correspond to the serial numbers of the respective documents. 